


A Good Man

by Iambic



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-25
Updated: 2012-09-25
Packaged: 2017-11-15 00:21:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/521061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iambic/pseuds/Iambic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"We married because we love Fereldan, not each other," he says, and smiles his best. "But is it completely impossible to think we could be friends someday?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Man

**Author's Note:**

> An exercise in stylised writing (mimicking Robin McKinley) and wish fulfillment.

Anora pauses on the flight up to the royal apartments, and the light winks on her dress as it sways in her momentum. Her hair, tightly bound, could be a helm of palest gold; she looks as much a seasoned warrior stepping into battle once more than a young queen on her wedding night. 

"Alistair," she says, and her voice is flat but not sharp, but her eyes hold no affection. "I loved my husband Cailan. I do not anticipate loving you, but I will do my duty by our kingdom."

She might be a mother of the Chantry, the way she intones these words, a vow more frank than those spoken in the sight of their people. His dead brother's widow, his wife and queen, and all he can feel is profound relief. A good man, she'd called Cailan, but Fereldan does not need another good man. She does not need another good man, she might have meant instead. 

Alistair has never been a clever man, but perhaps he is learning. 

"We married because we love Fereldan, not each other," he says, and smiles his best. "But is it completely impossible to think we could be friends someday?"

She says nothing. Her eyes cast down and he thinks, Maker help me, I will not make this the living hell she expects. "If nothing else, I'll need your help, I still have no idea what a king's supposed to do other than sit around and look pretty." Could that have been a flicker of amusement? She still does not meet his eyes. His queen, but wife in name only. He continues, "But I hope you're not expecting anything else of me right now, particularly tonight, because I'm only going to disappoint. I did just help kill an Archdemon. I think I deserve my beauty sleep for that."

"If you are to sit on a throne and look pretty as a profession," Anora says carefully, "you will need it."

She finally looks up then, and she is smiling faintly, though not without the edge of sadness about her eyes. But when Alistair steps forward she does not flinch, and emboldened, he presses a friend's kiss to her cheek. "Then I'll go to sleep now, so I can wake up early enough to primp."

He looks back once, from the door, and Anora is still watching him, and still smiling, and shakes her head as he pauses. "Cailan was never so silly," she explains. "But for once you seem to actually be his little brother." Her smile fades slightly, eyes going distant; her hands at her sides disappear in the folds of her dress. "He asked me to brush his hair each morning. Never mind that any number of servants could have done a better job."

Alistair does not know how to be king, or the trappings of marriage, but he does know grief. "He must have loved you," he says, and as a good friend once had said to him, "he was a good man."

"Yes," Anora replies, "I'm given reason to believe you Theirins often are."


End file.
